Upload - Then Embed Your YouTube Videos Into Your Website For Immediate Ranking (On YouTube AND Google)
(A chapter will be devoted to this in the next edition)
According to Alexa.com “Traffic Rankings” Google is the Number One visited website – YouTube is Number Three AND Google Owns YouTube.
YouTube is a search engine unto itself. The fact that YouTube is owned by Google, should be a clue that Google is starting to place a high priority on websites that embed YouTube videos – especially when they are produced by you, linked to your website (from YouTube) and the “YouTube” videos are embedded within your website.
What we are talking about here is actually two separate search engines. Achieving high ranking on Google for competitive items is getting harder and harder. However, you can get higher ranking on YouTube, simply because there are not as many websites incorporating videos.
Plus the added benefit of having a video on your website improves overall Google ranking – especially if it is a YouTube video. Google figures that your website is more “relevant” and useful – if you have a video – if not, they figure you are antiquated and not as useful.
It’s Simple – Here’s How to Do It
1. Set up a YouTube Account (it’s free) – Be sure to change the “channel type” to Director. If not, you will not be able to insert an active link back to your website from the YouTube video – this is very important. To reset your account channel to “Director” under: My Account – > Channel Info – > Channel Type (Change Channel Type to Director)
2. Upload your video (be sure you have formatted your video properly – see “Formatting your Video for YouTube” below).
3. Here’s the important part:
OPTIMIZE YOUR VIDEO (on YouTube) for YOUR WEBSITE
A. Use your most important keywords in your “Title” (text box available during upload on YouTube). The Title appears above the Video on YouTube and is most important (as with all keyword strategy the FIRST WORDS are the most important – For example a company called “Jack’s Baseball Cards” should have “Baseball Cards by Jack” in the title - NOT “Jack’s Baseball Cards”).
B. Underneath all videos on YouTube is an area for the video author’s information(the uploader – that’s you). It’s a description of the video and a link to the author’s website. The VERY FIRST entry on your description line (another text box available during a YouTube upload) has to be your “clickable” web address. In order for it to be clickable, you have to have “Director” status and you have to put the “http://” before your web address. For example, this website would be “http://www.get-top-ranking-on-search-engines.com” – omit the quotations. This clickable link shows up next to your video and is obvious for anyone watching it – if they want to click on your website to learn more. PLUS – it’s how Google ties the video back to your website and gives you valuable SEO ranking for that tie in.
C. Enter more keywords in your “Tags” text box, which is also available during the uploading process.
D. Be sure to save all the changes – after the upload finishes.
4. You MUST then embed your YouTube video into your OWN website – consult your website design program software (or web designer) for instructions on how to do this.
YouTube Tips
During Filming
To reduce “video information” therefore, increasing video quality – use a plain background and a tripod. This results in better apparent quality by reducing the amount of detail and motion in your video.
Shorter videos are played back at higher quality on You Tube (most folks don’t want to sit through more than about 5 minutes anyway) – 10 minutes is the maximum on YouTube.
Set your Video recorder on 320 x 240 aspect ration
Formatting your Video for YouTube
(For Those that want to get really technical – all others, just upload something, following the guidelines above )
Editing and Exporting your video
Once your video has been shot, you will want to do a little editing and this is done with a video editing software. I use Adobe Premier Elements (Highly Recommended),but there are many good ones out there under $100 and some are free, like the one already on your computer if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 – Windows Movie Maker ( I hear this is limited – but free)
First you must “capture” some video from a device (like a video camera) and you capture “a video clip” with the video editing software.
Be sure to set the capture “Bit Rate” correctly in your video editing program before you capture the video. This will dictate how much memory your video takes up. You are limited to 1 GB on You Tube. A shorter video will allow you to increase the bit rate and longer one you will have to lessen it.
Once captured it has to be edited or “dubbed” within the video editing software. You can shorten it, cut segments out of it, string various clips together, make cool transitions and overlay audio / music.
BUT the most important thing you will want to do in your video editing software is superimpose scrolling text over your video. Ideally running across the bottom like a tickertape. It’s here that you “brand” you video and you must include your website and any other relevant information like company name. You can repeat the website address scrolling several times on a longer video.
By reinforcing you web address in the scrolling text AND having the “clickable link”, which shows up right next to your video, you make it easy for the viewer to go straight to your website.
Once you have your final edited version in your video editing software, you still have to convert it to one of YouTube’s acceptable files formats. Again you do this conversion in your video editing software by “exporting” the project to a certain file format. This saves it to a folder, from which you can upload to You Tube.
Here are some tips from the YouTube “Help Center”
Best Formats for Uploading
YouTube can accept almost any video format for upload, but for most users we have found the following settings give the best results.
Video Format: H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 preferred
Aspect Ratio: Native aspect ratio without letter boxing (examples: 4:3, 16:9)
Resolution: 640×360 (16:9) or 480×360 (4:3) recommended
Audio Format: MP3 or AAC preferred
Frames per second: 30
Maximum length: 10 minutes (we recommend 2-3 minutes)
Maximum file size: 2 GB
Good Links on YouTube for Better Videos
http://www.youtube.com/t/yt_handbook_produce#
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=132460&topic=16612&hl=en-US
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55744&ctx=sibling
YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats. This list is all the video files YouTube will accept. Some video formats work best and are most compatible with certain computers, software or devices.
Windows Media Video(.avi)
.3GP (cell phones)
.AVI (windows)
.MOV (mac)
.MP4 (ipod/psp)
.MPEG
.FLV (adobe flash)
.SWF (shockwave flash)
.MKV (h.264)
If you do not think your current video file format is recognized by YouTube, you may get the best results from converting your file to MPEG4 video with MP3 audio.
To convert most any video format to one of the aforementioned accepted formats it is recommended you use FFMPEG. FFMPEG is a command-line tool, so newer users may like to use the free tool, SUPER, which can be found at http://www.erightsoft.org/. If you do not produce acceptable results with these tools, you may also try the commercial software, Magic Video Converter [ http://www.magic-video-software.com/magic_video_converter/index.html ].
Windows Movie Maker, by default saves projects as .MSWMM files. These file are project files, which means it only tells Windows Movie Maker the layout of your video and does not contain the final video itself, and because of this, YouTube does not accept .MSWMM files. To upload your Windows Movie Maker video to YouTube, select the “Save to My Computer” option to save the file and upload the generated file.
Keep in mind that each time you convert or “transcode” a video from one type of compression to another, there will be some loss in quality, sort of like making a photo copy of a photo copy. Avoid transcoding a highly compressed video into a format that is accepted. You’ll get poor results. You’ll get better results by going back to your original video editing software where you edited the video, and re-export in a format like MPEG4 with MP3 audio, or if that is unavailable, exporting it as a RAW (uncompressed) video format then encoding it in an external program such as those listed above.
